Menu

The Sex of the Stars

Audra Puchalski

That cluster of stars over there-and when I say “cluster of stars” I mean a set of stars that are not clustered at all, but they appear to be a cluster to a human viewer on earth who can’t see perspective in outer space-

-anyway the stars in that “cluster” are of the same sex, a sex we’ll just call female for the sake of convenience but realistically it’s unlikely that any of them have a vagina or two X chromosomes. They probably don’t have genitalia or chromosomes at all. The point is, whatever star sexes there are, those stars have the same one.

The lady stars in this cluster like to get together-although they don’t so much “get together,” actually, as continue drifting rapidly away from each other as a result of the Big Bang-they get together and talk about stars of the opposite star sex, that is, another star sex, the sex of star they want to have star sex with, whatever sex that is, since there could be more than two star sexes.

The stars get together for girl talk over star Long Islands. Except for one of the stars who is generally more interested in having sex with a star of the same sex. The lesbian star still hangs out with her heterosexual star friends because she enjoys their company, although sometimes she gets bored when they won’t stop talking about stupid hairy star boys.

Of course, stars don’t have hair. They don’t have any secondary sexual characteristics, in fact, because they’re massive hypercondensed collections of gas with a correspondingly powerful gravitational pull and always on fire-that is, until they collapse or explode after billions and billions of years.

It’s hard to say whether stars have primary sexual characteristics, either. It would be rude to ask. The star girlfriends order a second round of star cocktails and the lesbian star, who is secretly in love with one of her heterosexual star friends, wonders if she should confess that love. She is feeling bold. I say “she” but star gender pronouns probably do not include “she.”

The lesbian star notices that her star crush seems less eager to talk about star boys than the others and that she always proposes skinny dipping after the second or third round, but another star always glances over at the lesbian star and says, “We’d better not.” The lesbian star would like to have same-sex sex with her same-star-sex star friend, but she doesn’t know how.

She doesn’t know how partially because she thinks there’s no way to bring it up that won’t be socially awkward, especially since the group of friends functions under two assumptions: first, that the lesbian star has only friendly feelings toward all the star friends, and second, that all the star friends except for the lesbian star are heterosexual. And partially because she doesn’t know how stars have sex because no two stars have ever gotten close enough to touch.

Audra Puchalski lives and writes letters to Cher in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is working on an MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared in Elimae and Kill Author, and she has collaborated about pop culture for Network Awesome Magazine.